Last verified October 10, 2026.
Details about Bland AI come from its public pages as they were on October 10, 2026. Bland AI may have changed them since, and a page that was unclear to us may be clear to you. Corrections: support@calldesk.tech. We make Calldesk, so read this page with that in mind and check anything important with Bland AI directly.
About Bland AI
How Bland AI positions itself: A vertically integrated voice agent platform that owns telephony, speech, language model and orchestration and sells a single bundled per-minute rate, with a forward-deployed engineering service for larger deployments.
Side by side
A row is shown when we could read both sides. Where Bland AI's pages did not say, a cell reads "not stated on the pages we reviewed" rather than a guess. It rests on published pricing, setup and wording, and does not use call-quality or benchmark results.
| Topic | Calldesk | Bland AI |
|---|---|---|
| How pricing works | Per minute of call time on three plans: Lite 2¢, Standard 5¢, Pro 9¢. No monthly minimum. Phone carrier charges are billed separately. | Plan-based per-minute rate that bundles LLM, speech-to-text and text-to-speech (no token charges); platform fee on higher plans; custom enterprise contracts. (source: bland.ai) |
| Published starting price | 2¢ to 9¢ per minute depending on the plan, before phone carrier charges | $0.14 per minute on the free Start plan, $0.12 per minute on Build ($299 per month); LLM, speech-to-text and text-to-speech are included, telephony is billed separately. (source: bland.ai) |
| Billed separately or extra | The phone carrier is billed separately unless you buy numbers from us; Expert backup is an optional extra on Lite and Standard at 1.5 cents per minute | Telephony: billed separately, either on your own carrier or Bland's at pass-through cost (pricing FAQ); Transfer minutes when using Bland-provided numbers; SMS: $0.02 per message; web-widget agent messages $0.01 per message (docs); Outbound minimum $0.015 per call attempt on Bland telephony (docs) (source: bland.ai) |
| Trying it first | A free demo call on the Calldesk site | Start plan is free with no card required and includes starter credits and an inbound number valued at $15 per month (the credit amount is not specified on the page). (source: bland.ai) |
| Bring your own carrier | Yes, on every plan, at no extra charge, by forwarding calls to a number you register (no SIP trunking) | Yes (source: docs.bland.ai) |
| Phone numbers from the provider | A paid extra on every plan: Telnyx $1.00 per month per number plus 1 cent per inbound minute; Twilio $2.00 per month per number plus 1.5 cents per inbound minute. Registering a number you already own costs nothing extra. | Bland numbers on its built-in Twilio at pass-through cost; own Twilio account and SIP trunks (with number porting) are supported. Specific countries for Bland numbers were not listed on the pages read. (source: docs.bland.ai) |
| HIPAA | Not claimed | Stated on their pages (source: bland.ai) |
| SOC 2 | Not claimed | Stated on their pages (source: bland.ai) |
| GDPR | Not claimed | Stated on their pages (source: bland.ai) |
| Integrations and developer tools | REST API, MCP server and signed webhooks, plus calendar booking | Twilio (bring your own account), SIP trunks from any carrier or contact-center platform, SMS and web chat, Web Agent SDK, Webhooks and custom tools and Knowledge bases |
About Bland AI's compliance wording: Stated by vendor, self-attested: pricing FAQ and docs say SOC 2 Type I and Type II, HIPAA-eligible with a signed BAA, GDPR and PCI DSS; compliance documentation is provided under NDA on Enterprise. BAA is listed as an Enterprise feature.
Bland AI pricing details
- Start: $0 platform fee, $0.14 per minute talk time, $0.05 per transfer minute, 10 concurrent calls, 100 calls per day, 10 knowledge bases, 1 voice. (source: bland.ai)
- Build: $299 per month, $0.12 per minute, $0.04 per transfer minute, 50 concurrent calls, 2,000 calls per day, 50 knowledge bases, 5 voices. (source: bland.ai)
- Enterprise: custom pricing; BAA, SSO, data residency, on-prem/VPC and forward-deployed engineers listed. (source: bland.ai)
- Bland docs also list a Scale plan ($499 per month, $0.11 per minute, $0.03 transfer) that did not appear on the public pricing page read on the retrieval date. (source: bland.ai)
- Docs also list an Agent Phone plan at $29.99 for a single agent number with US/Canada voice minutes and SMS included without a stated minute cap. (source: bland.ai)
- Outbound calls on Bland telephony carry a $0.015 minimum charge per attempt (docs); transfer fees do not apply when using your own Twilio account. (source: bland.ai)
What Bland AI does well
- Simple bundled pricing: one per-minute rate covers the language model, transcription and voice, with no token charges or model pass-throughs. (source: bland.ai)
- Stated compliance coverage (SOC 2 Type I and II, HIPAA-eligible with BAA, GDPR, PCI DSS) and on-prem/VPC deployment for regulated enterprises. (source: bland.ai)
- Hands-on enterprise delivery: a forward-deployed engineering team and a documented 28-day deployment framework for enterprise rollouts. (source: bland.ai)
- Visual Conversational Pathways builder for branching call flows, with SIP trunk support, number porting and Twilio integration. (source: docs.bland.ai)
- Large-scale infrastructure: docs state it owns the full stack and supports very high concurrency (up to 1 million concurrent calls on the vendor's own claim). (source: docs.bland.ai)
Conditions to check with Bland AI
These are limits or conditions described on the pages we reviewed. We list them so you can check whether they matter for your calls.
- Per-day and per-hour call caps apply on self-serve plans (100 calls per day on Start, 2,000 on Build); no cap is listed for Enterprise. (source: bland.ai)
- Compliance items such as BAA, SSO and data residency are listed under the Enterprise plan, and compliance documentation is available under NDA on Enterprise. (source: bland.ai)
- Bland states that all production pathways and personas must be migrated to its new agent architecture by November 15, 2026. (source: docs.bland.ai)
Where Calldesk is different
- Billing: Bland AI's headline price does not cover telephony, transfer minutes when using Bland-provided numbers, SMS and outbound minimum, which its pages bill separately or as extras (the table above has the details). Calldesk bills one per-minute rate for the plan you choose (Lite 2¢, Standard 5¢ and Pro 9¢ per minute), and the phone carrier is billed separately unless you buy numbers from us. Compare the two on a month of your own calls.
- Phone setup: both support bringing your own carrier. With Calldesk you register a number you own and forward calls to it. Calldesk does not offer SIP trunking, which Bland AI's pages describe. Calldesk also sells numbers from Telnyx and Twilio if you prefer not to bring one.
- Languages: Calldesk supports 40+ languages, including English; agents in a language other than English need the Standard or Pro voice, because the Lite voice speaks English only.
- Developer tools: Calldesk has a REST API, an MCP server and signed webhooks for call.completed, call.transferred and call.analyzed events (/docs).
- Compliance: Calldesk does not currently claim any compliance certification, so if your industry requires one, ask us what we can show you before you rely on it.
Which one fits
Bland AI may suit you if this describes you: mid-market and enterprise teams that want a single bundled per-minute rate and hands-on engineering help for regulated or high-volume phone automation.
Calldesk may suit you if your calls match one of its plans. Lite is for straightforward calls such as confirmations and quick questions, where cost matters most. Standard is for most businesses: reception, booking, intake and after-hours coverage. Pro is for complex or high-stakes calls where reasoning and tone matter most. Current prices are on the pricing page at /pricing.
What we could not confirm about Bland AI
- The Scale plan ($499, $0.11 per minute) appears in docs but not on the public pricing page; which is current is unconfirmed.
- Whether telephony is included or extra on the self-serve per-minute rate: the pricing FAQ says it is billed separately at pass-through, but no per-minute carrier rate was found.
- Free-trial credit amount ('2 credits') is not defined in dollars.
- Number port-out process for Bland-purchased numbers not found.
- Compliance reports are under NDA and were not seen.
Sources
- Bland pricing page (retrieved October 10, 2026)
- Bland docs: Billing & Plans (retrieved October 10, 2026)
- Bland docs: SIP (retrieved October 10, 2026)
- Bland docs: Migrate to agents (retrieved October 10, 2026)
- Bland docs index (retrieved October 10, 2026)
- Bland API: Get All Pathways (retrieved October 10, 2026)
- Bland docs: Conversations (retrieved October 10, 2026)